ravenkult posted:Any good recs for an Alien vibe? Abandoned space stations or ships, etc? Charles Sheffield had a series on the go along these lines, the Heritage series, but it is more scifi than horror also he died before finishing the arc so the alien artifact mystery will never be solved
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# ? Feb 3, 2019 22:54 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:29 |
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julietthecat posted:I'd be super interesting in this kind of thing too...maybe more Prometheus than Alien. Ooh, I've been on a Greg Bear binge - I've read Heads, Queen of Angels and I'm in the middle of the War Dogs omnibus. As I really love his writing, definitely sliding Hull Zero Three up there, thanks!
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# ? Feb 3, 2019 23:32 |
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i have developed a weird crush on ligotti, and to be perfectly frank he's the only 21st century horror name i'd date. maybe langan, i didn't like his book but the tone of it and his friend coming in here to defend him all gave me the impression of a very sweet man. barron would take me out to a great restaurant and pay for everything but i have this strange suspicion that he would have something mildly wrong with his penis and then get weird about it. ligotti i would date once and then he would gently caress everything up and never get another chance but i'd be randomly getting suicidal texts from him at 4 in the morning for the next thirty years, which is what i'm into any other suggestions?
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:06 |
robert aickman
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:26 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:robert aickman
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:31 |
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usually stilted lovecraft-lite prose is an obvious cargo cult affectation and it pisses me off, but in ligotti's case i am happy to believe he talks like that irl. he has this tone that somehow falls perfectly halfway between innsmouth and the curious incident of the dog in the night time, and it's inexplicably delightful to me
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:33 |
Bilirubin posted:Charles Sheffield had a series on the go along these lines, the Heritage series, but it is more scifi than horror also he died before finishing the arc so the alien artifact mystery will never be solved been trying to make a death of the author joke since you posted this but i cant make it work
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:33 |
chernobyl kinsman posted:been trying to make a death of the author joke since you posted this but i cant make it work I tried when I wrote it
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:44 |
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ligotti posted:It is that sinister enchantment which derives from a profound evil that is kept at just the right distance from us so that we may experience both our love and our fear of it in one sweeping sensation. Too close and we may be reminded of an omnipresent evil in the living world and threatened with having our sleeping sense of doom awakened into full vigor. Too far away and we become even more incurious and complacent than is our usual state and ultimately exasperated when an imaginary evil is so poorly evoked that it fails to offer the faintest echo of its real and all-pervasive counterpart. Of course, any number of locales may serve as the setting to reveal ominous truths; evil, beloved and menacing evil, may show itself anywhere precisely because it is everywhere and is as stunningly set off by a foil of sunshine and flowers as it is by darkness and dead leaves.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 00:59 |
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he apparently does talk like that, judging from the interviews
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 01:03 |
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publishers: so uh thomas about that deadline...? ligotti on webcam: *heavy breathing* ... publishers: hahaha. ha. ok
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 01:08 |
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Origami Dali posted:he apparently does talk like that, judging from the interviews
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 01:14 |
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julietthecat posted:Finally, Into the Void by Brett Talley and My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron are also about humans in space encountering mysterious vessels and, perhaps, aliens who may not have humans' best interests in mind. Both are pretty bad. Into the Void is reminiscent of Event Horizon, and is by far the better of the two if you do check one out. Brett Talley’s career is way more entertaining than any of his books so just save your money and google his name instead
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 06:11 |
A human heart posted:i've never read ligotti but that current 93 album he wrote the lyrics for is badass yeah it's pretty sweet of an album. I like how they melted a speak & spell to make that "grhghrhmbrbrhrjiamb"-speech
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 07:14 |
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Fallom posted:Brett Talley’s career is way more entertaining than any of his books so just save your money and google his name instead Uhhh yeah, thanks for the tip. And probably shouldn't be giving this guy any money... Buzzfeed News posted:In one post on TideFans.com, poster "BamainBoston," who identified himself as Talley in 2014, wrote in response to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, "My solution would be to stop being a society of pansies and man up."
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 07:15 |
also is it true that when king decided to write DT again he had to hire someone to read the books and create like a comprehensive research document of what the situation was and the relationships between various characters and settings, because he completely forgot what he was going for?
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 07:18 |
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SniperWoreConverse posted:also is it true that when king decided to write DT again he had to hire someone to read the books and create like a comprehensive research document of what the situation was and the relationships between various characters and settings, because he completely forgot what he was going for? I know GRRM uses the Fire and Ice wiki for his new book and has a couple of super fans on speed dial when he wants to double check things. Also The Cipher is finally going to be back in print! Not sure when but Koja confirmed it on Twitter. Just need Hodge's books to follow suit now.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 11:39 |
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a foolish pianist posted:I started Transmission this weekend, and so far, it seems very amateurish. The prose is weirdly stilted, almost high school-ish. I'll give it some more time, but it's not particularly promising. I finished this last night. It's true, it's pretty amateurish. Beyond the stitled prose, it was clearly (badly) self-edited and has basic mistakes (e.g. confusing lie and lay). It reads like a series on the No Sleep subreddit. It cribs pretty heavily from The Ring, as one might predict, and doesn't do anything interesting. I'd pass on this, unless one is getting pretty desperate for stories about spooky found video/audio.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 14:40 |
julietthecat posted:I finished this last night. It's true, it's pretty amateurish. Beyond the stitled prose, it was clearly (badly) self-edited and has basic mistakes (e.g. confusing lie and lay). It reads like a series on the No Sleep subreddit. It cribs pretty heavily from The Ring, as one might predict, and doesn't do anything interesting. I'd pass on this, unless one is getting pretty desperate for stories about spooky found video/audio. I just read Transmission this weekend, and I'd agree with all of this. I was pretty underwhelmed.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 17:13 |
Skyscraper posted:At the risk of being a doctor with only one prescription, have you read The Cipher yet? Just finished this. I actually didn't enjoy it very much, it felt oppressively monotone to me - it was all 'ugh, my hand's hosed up and artists are shits' all the time. I don't know if it was deliberate, I can see how it could be, but I felt like it really could have done with a rest at some point, it just all blended together after a while. The bit where he drives to the country and doesn't off himself is the only scene I can remember that changes the scene any, and even that was still the same tone. Again, maybe it was deliberate, reflecting Nicholas' passivity and lack of control, but I felt like it harmed the storytelling. Cool writing style, though, I really enjoyed the terse/broken sentences. Wasn't sure I could manage a whole book of it at first, but I guess I got used to it.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 22:34 |
lofi posted:Just finished this. I actually didn't enjoy it very much, it felt oppressively monotone to me - it was all 'ugh, my hand's hosed up and artists are shits' all the time. I don't know if it was deliberate, I can see how it could be, but I felt like it really could have done with a rest at some point, it just all blended together after a while. Yeah, oppressively monotone fits. Sorry that didn't work for you! If you want another recommendation for some reason, try Looking For Jake.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 22:59 |
lofi posted:Just finished this. I actually didn't enjoy it very much, it felt oppressively monotone to me - it was all 'ugh, my hand's hosed up and artists are shits' all the time. I don't know if it was deliberate, I can see how it could be, but I felt like it really could have done with a rest at some point, it just all blended together after a while. To me, it felt very local to a particular kind of 90s social scene, a lot like The Doom Generation or a few other mid-90s works. I can imagine it seeming very alien if you didn't come up in that era or one of its analogs.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 23:04 |
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Skyscraper posted:I just read Transmission this weekend, and I'd agree with all of this. I was pretty underwhelmed. Agreed, but if you love the idea of horror involving lost or found footage and numbers stations it's decent. There really isn't much horror in that genre.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 23:06 |
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Agreed, but if you love the idea of horror involving lost or found footage and numbers stations it's decent. There really isn't much horror in that genre. I guess one final book that occurs to me is Universal Harvester, which I probably heard about in the old thread. It is about an investigation into creepy scenes spliced onto VHS tapes in the Midwest. It's definitely not horror, or at least the kind of horror one would expect from the premise. Really it's a study on the effects of loss and profound grief. It is good, but I can definitely see being disappointed if one has the wrong expectations.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 23:35 |
UCS Hellmaker posted:Agreed, but if you love the idea of horror involving lost or found footage and numbers stations it's decent. There really isn't much horror in that genre. Yeah, the found footage part was decent, it made me excited for whatever was coming next, but the actual horror content after that was lacking. Someone else compared it to The Ring, and yeah, it was like The Ring but totally toothless, 15 years after the American version. The radio seance was original, at least.
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 00:51 |
Universal Harvester is fantastic. It starts out seeming like a horror novel, but then it turns out to be about family and loneliness and grief and lots of other things.
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 05:02 |
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a foolish pianist posted:Universal Harvester is fantastic. It starts out seeming like a horror novel, but then it turns out to be about family and loneliness and grief and lots of other things. I was disappointed by that book not because it wasn't horror, but because of how it fizzled out at the end.
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 19:09 |
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ravenkult posted:I was disappointed by that book not because it wasn't horror, but because of how it fizzled out at the end. I felt the same way with his other book Wolf in White Van. Both had me invested and then just kind of end
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 00:22 |
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There was a short story I read online that was about bear monsters loving up a gang of outlaws in the old west. It might have had massacre or monster in the title. It was good is all.
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 05:19 |
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i am going to give my new favourite tragic boy ligotti some money. i've only read teattro grottesco, any suggestions for which book to buy? (i can only afford one lol)
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 22:44 |
the penguin edition of songs of a dead dreamer & grimscribe combines two books into one there's some overlap with teatro but iirc not too much
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 23:38 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:songs of a dead dreamer & grimscribe
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 03:03 |
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"grimscribe" omg part of me thinks ligotti on a good day would be hilarious irl because he's just so loving relentlessly dour and so deadpan about it that it becomes funny and i'm pretty sure he's aware of that (e: and yes i'm aware his issues are real and genuine, one of the best things about teatro was the subtle running theme of all the characters being too mentally ill to hold down a normal job, which iirc was a plot point in not one but several stories) anyway i ordered his book today and immediately afterward this happened to me (trigger warning quail death), i thought other horror fans might appreciate it pikachode fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Feb 8, 2019 |
# ? Feb 8, 2019 16:44 |
pikachode posted:anyway i ordered his book today and immediately afterward this happened to me (trigger warning quail death), i thought other horror fans might appreciate it "when you can feel them moving it's not chicks but bubbles of gas shifting inside the rotting eggshell" yeah that's appropriate for Ligotti
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 17:34 |
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Skyscraper posted:"when you can feel them moving it's not chicks but bubbles of gas shifting inside the rotting eggshell" yeah that's appropriate for Ligotti
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 17:37 |
pikachode posted:there's a series of posts, two of the eggs had quail in them but they... they weren't right Those were hosed up too, but less existentially so.
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 17:49 |
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If I didn’t like North American Lake Monsters because I felt like every story was a lot of buildup with no payoff, will I also dislike The Visible Filth?
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 17:57 |
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Esme posted:If I didn’t like North American Lake Monsters because I felt like every story was a lot of buildup with no payoff, will I also dislike The Visible Filth? I think it's worth a try. I like Lake Monsters myself, but I can see what you mean. Visible Filth is a bit more traditional.
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 19:15 |
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Anybody read Cody Goodfellow? I liked a short story of his I recently read in Black Static and then noticed that I had Radiant Dawn and Ravenous Dusk on my Kindle, probably from some Humble Bundle I’d forgotten about. Radiant Dawn I found a nice, quick conspiracy theories + black ops + horror mishmash and Ravenous Dusk (the sequel) seems promising as well.
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# ? Feb 9, 2019 00:22 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:29 |
i read them both when i was in high school and thought they were fine at the time. in retrospect the subplot about the guys without penises who secretly breed a race of severely-disabled philosopher kings was a bit much, as was the destroying power of the glowing primal sperm, released from its ancient vaults beneath the earth e: the sperm bit might be in the second one
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# ? Feb 9, 2019 07:48 |